Growing, going, gone as ivy disappears at Cradley Heath house

Now you see it, now you don't. A carpet of thick ivy has finally been cleared from an eyesore home after a huge clean-up operation.

Ivy once enveloped the house, in Old Hill, Cradley Heath, slowly creeping over windows, walls and eventually the roof.

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It covered every crevice of the building to the frustration of neighbours who been confronted by the sight for years.

An incredible two tons of foliage was cut from the house which is now under new ownership after being bought at auction. The new owner, who did not want to be named, wants to renovate the house to turn it back into a family home.

He employed specialist company Shirley Ivy Stripping, from Solihull, to remove the ivy as part of the restoration. Workers spent a week transforming the view for people living nearby as they painstakingly set about their task.

First the ivy was cut down piece by piece carefully to ensure the structure of the building was not affected.

This took specialist workers around three days to complete. The ivy then had to be loaded up onto a lorry to be transported to a special depot to be disposed off after it was weighed. They then worked over the next four days cleaning traces of the ivy from brickwork and roof tiles.

Company boss David Sidwell said: "We've never had a job of this scale before but now the house can breathe once more.

"The longer the ivy is established, the more difficult it can be to remove so we had to be careful as we went along.

"I think the neighbours will be even more pleased than the owner as it seems to have been an eyesore for them."